If You're Thinking of Living In/Uniondale; A Place to Start Living the Suburban Life

UNIONDALE is an ethnically diverse, middle-income area of single-family small homes in the town of Hempstead in central Nassau County. The hamlet has a highly active real estate market characterized by low inventory, moderate to low housing prices, quick turnover and bidding wars.

''Many houses are selling for more than the asking price, and because of the lack of inventory, when a good one comes on the market it can be gone in a day,'' said Richard B. Krug, the office manager at Coldwell Banker Sammis in neighboring East Meadow.

The small Cape is king here, lining street after car-filled street. Upstairs dormer windows and additions are common. With homes selling for less than $200,000 still plentiful, even in the current market, Uniondale is popular with first-time buyers. Most houses were built between the late 1940's and the early 1960's, when the population was soaring.

Prices are bunched around $200,000, with limited variation. On the higher end, a four-bedroom, two-bath Cape built in 1957 on a 60-by-116-foot lot with a detached garage is currently on the market for $214,900, with taxes of $4,500. At the lower end, a two-bedroom, one-bath Cape on a 60-by-100-foot lot is listed for $189,000. Taxes are $3,500.

Park Gardens, a 120-unit low-income apartment complex operated by the town of Hempstead, is open to residents 62 and older who reside in unincorporated areas in the town, including Uniondale, where the complex is located. Income limits are $37,200 for one person and $42,500 for couples. There is a five-year waiting list.

But most who come to Uniondale are buying a first home rather than retiring.

''People move here because it's a good starter community,'' said Albert Williams, the owner and a broker at Genesis Realty Network in Uniondale. ''Houses retain value and buyers can make their investment here and feel it is relatively safe. Most sellers move on. Very few buy again in Uniondale.''

New census figures show Uniondale's Hispanic population increased by more than 70 percent to 5,261 from 1990 to 2000, one of the fastest growth rates on Long Island for Hispanic residents. The hamlet's population -- now 23,011 -- grew by less than 10 percent in the same period. Hispanics now make up more than 20 percent of all residents.

Patrick Young, a program director at the Central American Refugee Center in Hempstead, said Uniondale was popular with Hispanic immigrants, many from Colombia, El Salvador and Ecuador, who wished to reside near Hempstead, the hub of Hispanic culture in Nassau County.

''It's generally not the first place people move to, but it's typically a relocation area for people who have been in the country for 5 to 10 years,'' he said.

In 1990 to 2000, the non-Hispanic white population fell by half, to just over 4,000, and non-Hispanic blacks increased by 32 percent, to 12,438. The figures portray Uniondale's continued emergence as a black and Hispanic middle-class area.

What it lacks in local amenities like major parks or a traditional downtown commercial area, Uniondale makes up for with close proximity to some of the major institutions and attractions in Nassau County.

To the south, the world-class ocean beaches of Jones Beach State Park are 10 minutes away on the Meadowbrook Parkway, which forms the hamlet's eastern boundary.

Eisenhower Park, a 930-acre Nassau County park, is less than 10 minutes away. It has three golf courses, an Olympic-sized swimming pool, all manner of sports fields and courts, a theater for concerts and acres of picnic grounds.

Roosevelt Park, another county park, which is on 29 acres near Meadowbrook Parkway, has handball, basketball and tennis courts, a ball field, a playground, a picnic area and a three-mile nature trail. County leisure passes needed for park entry are $15 a year.

There is no charge for Hempstead residents at three smaller town parks in Uniondale. Each has sports fields and courts as well as picnic and playground areas.

Local shops and stores are on Uniondale Avenue, the main north-to-south corridor, and also on Front Street and Jerusalem Avenue.

Roosevelt Field, Long Island's largest regional shopping mall, is just to the north, past the 18,000-seat Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, a multipurpose arena that opened in 1972. The Coliseum is the home of the New York Islanders hockey team and other sports teams and is the site of concerts, special events and exhibitions. It is right across Hempstead Turnpike, generally regarded as Uniondale's northern border.

Hofstra University, a private coeducational institution whose total enrollment of more than 13,000 includes 8,000 undergraduates, and Nassau Community College, which with 20,000 students is the largest two-year community college in the state, are neighbors. Some Hofstra students rent in Uniondale.

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THE Uniondale School District is one of the largest districts in Nassau County. It has an enrollment of 6,000 students in eight schools: five for kindergarten through fifth grade, two middle schools and Uniondale High School. The district also includes parts of Baldwin, Hempstead and Garden City.

School officials said 41 languages are spoken in the district, where about 75 percent of the students are black, 21 percent Hispanic, 3 percent white and 1 percent Asian.

Half of the 305 graduates in the class of 2001 earned Regents diplomas. About 60 percent are going on to four-year colleges; 29 percent will go to two-year colleges and the others will enter trade school, the military or the job force.

The most recent College Board scores available for the school averaged 400 in the verbal test, which is 94 points below the state average, and 450 in math, 56 points below the state average. The district said the relatively low scores, which look even lower compared with many other districts in Nassau, were a source of concern.

This spring, two students in the district's new science research class were among just 38 students from 13 Long Island districts and the first ever from Uniondale to display a project at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in California. The students -- Daniel Rowe, a senior, and Simeon McMillan, a freshman -- studied how sound qualities in the croaking of frogs linked species.

Four years ago district voters approved a $20 million bond for a recently constructed high school wing, additional classrooms and computers. There is at least one computer lab in each school building and three computers in every classroom. A new telephone system has a homework hotline for parents.

The Uniondale Public Library, which opened in 1954, contains 115,000 volumes and video and audio collections. The library's first youth poetry contest, held this spring, brought 130 poems from children aged 5 through 12.

The A. Holly Patterson Extended Care Facility on Jerusalem Avenue, an 889-bed skilled nursing center for geriatric patients and treatment of Alzheimer's disease, respiratory ailments and wounds, opened in 1961 on a 72-acre campus at the site of Hempstead's former town farm and poorhouse.

Uniondale is also the site of a Federal Courthouse for the Eastern District of New York. The courthouse is located off Hempstead Turnpike. Greenfield Cemetery, a 158-acre town of Hempstead burial ground whose plots may be purchased only by town residents, is in the hamlet's southwest corner.

With Meadowbrook Parkway and Southern State Parkway at its borders, Uniondale is well situated for road travel. But there is no local railroad station and rail commuters must drive about 10 minutes west to the village of Hempstead.

Uniondale was part of the Hempstead Plains when English settlers arrived in the 1640's and used it for pasture. Farming held sway for 300 years, until the post World War II housing boom carved up the last of the potato fields.

In 1853 residents discarded the area's old name, Turtle Bend, which apparently referred to a turtle crossing on a bend in the road.

UNIONDALE has been tied in one way or another to most major wars. During the Revolutionary War it was an enlistment center; in the Civil War it hosted a Union camp; and in 1918 to 1961 it was a near neighbor of Mitchel Field, an Army Air Force base. Many residents worked at the field and later at nearby plants of the military contractors Grumman, Republic and Sperry Gyroscope.

Robert Albertson, who came to Uniondale from Brooklyn as a boy in 1952, remembers flights from Mitchel Field rising over potato fields but thinks of his hometown now as ''the high-rise capital of Nassau County.'' As fire district secretary for the 137-member Uniondale Volunteer Fire Department, he knows every high rise from the gleaming EAB Plaza office towers to a 14-story Hofstra dormitory at Hofstra. Though the total is less than two dozen buildings, all are within the district.

Susan Cross, a retired phone company worker, and her husband, Earl, a meat manager, moved to a ranch house in Uniondale last year after Mrs. Cross grew weary of urban life in Queens Village.

''I just got tired of going outside and seeing nothing but my neighbor's doorway,'' Mrs. Cross said. The Crosses looked in Baldwin and Freeport before Mrs. Cross and her 13-year-old son found the ranch. ''When we got out the car and saw the house, we said, 'This is it,' '' she said.

''It's private as you would like it to be, and if you want to be sociable, there's plenty of people around,'' she said of Uniondale. ''I like the openness and the idea that I don't always have to put money in the meter to park.''

Correction: July 8, 2001, Sunday An article last Sunday about living in Uniondale, N.Y. included an outdated reference to the location of a federal courthouse. The federal courts for the Eastern District of New York that had been in Uniondale are now at a new courthouse in Central Islip.